Empress Dowager Ci'an - Ci'an As A Person

Ci'an As A Person

A popular view of Empress Dowager Ci'an is that she was a highly respectable person, always quiet, never hot-tempered, and that she treated everybody very well and was highly respected by the Xianfeng Emperor. Both Tongzhi and Guangxu preferred Ci'an above Cixi. Her good-hearted personality was no match for Empress Dowager Cixi, who managed to sideline the naive and candid Empress Dowager Ci'an. This is still the popular view in China, the image of a quiet Empress Dowager Ci'an perhaps stemming from the meaning of her honorific name.

However, some historians have painted a very different reality, mainly that of a self-indulgent and idle Empress Dowager Ci'an, who did not care as much for government and hard work as she cared for the pleasures and sweet life inside the Forbidden City. Empress Dowager Cixi, on the other hand, was a shrewd and intelligent woman who was ready to make sacrifices and work hard in order to obtain the supreme power, and who faced the complex problems that were besetting China at the time. As often, the reality may lie in between these two extremes and some even claim that Ci'an is said to have exhibited temper and willpower. The popular view of Ci'an being a nice simple girl was exaggerated by the reformer Kang Yu-wei and biographers Bland and Backhouse, to build up the contrast between her and Cixi. There are no documented meetings between any foreigner and Ci'an, unlike Cixi, who met many foreigners after 1900.

Katherine A. Carl, who spent 9 months with empress dowager Cixi in 1903 described Ci'an, even though she never met her, as follows: Ci'an was known as the "Literary Empress". While Cixi handled all state affairs, Ci'an gave herself up to literary pursuits and led the life of a student. She was a woman of such fine literary ability that she herself sometimes examined the essays of the aspirants for the highest literary honors at the University of Beijing. She was also a writer of distinction. Ci'an and Cixi lived amicably together, appreciated each others qualities, and are said to have had a sincere affection for each other, which never weakened during the whole of their long association. Their amicable relation ended with the death of Ci'an in 1881.

Another view of Ci'an was written by Lim Boon Keng. The beautiful Yehenara, like the Jewess Hager, was the handmaid who was to bear a son for her master. Ci'an appears to have been like Sarah, who in her anxiety to make up for her own sterility, encouraged her husband to show his favor to his maid. Perhaps Xianfeng didn't need encouragement, but Ci'an took great interest in the concubine as the prospective mother of the emperor's son and heir. Cixi was quick-tempered and probably jealous of the empress. Just before the birth of Tongzhi, Cixi was nearly demoted in rank for her bad temper and insolence. Ci'an intervened on her behalf. In contrast to Hager, Cixi did not openly despise her mistress. She was as tame as a lamb, and for many years they lived on terms of friendship.